Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has plans to extend private fostering arrangements to children up to the age of 18 years; and if he will make a statement.
We have no plans to extend the regulations covering private fostering to apply them to children up to the age of 18. Local authorities’ general safeguarding duties, set out in statutory guidance ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’, apply to children aged 16 or 17, so local authorities should respond to any concerns about such children in private fostering arrangements.